By Richard Vedder
Many Democrats don't trust markets and prefer public solutions to private ones, so I suppose the assault on private for profit higher education should not be surprising. But it is threatening the single part of higher education that focuses on student needs with laser like intensity, the sector that is most efficient, and that disproprtionately serves lower income Americans whose parents never went to college.
First came the assault on the private loan providers. Obama wanted to put them out of business, and largely succeeded. Then there is the harassing of the smaller for profit start ups. I get nearly daily missives from Dick Bishirjian of Yorktown University. First was the accreditor/Department of Education threat to make on-line providers get licensed in every state that they operate. This imposes enormous costs, creates barriers to entry, restricts competition, and raises fees to the mostly lower income recipients on the educational services. Yesterday, Dick told me that the Dodd financial reform bill would make Private Placement equity financing nearly impossible --precisely the type of funding most for profit start ups get to begin business.
But then that old Enemy of the People, Bob Shireman, struck again. Bob is the Deputy Under Secretary of Education in charge of harassing the for profits. I once chided him that he was the only person I knew personally who could and did destroy $200 million in wealth in the manner of seconds by his utterances. Two days ago, he beat that record easily, wiping out over a billion dollars of wealth instantly by his bellicose attacks on the for profits and their accreditors, saying, as if it were a crime, that the for profits are having enormous gains in Pell Grant recipients. Rather than applauding their reaching out to a market that most of his beloved not-for-profit public schools ignore, he berates them, likening them (if news accounts are to be believed) to Wall Street predators. Apollo stock fell six percent in minutes; Corinthian Colleges fell almost 10 percent.
As one person correctly said at the conference of the Annointed in Higher Education that I attended yesterday (why I was invited, I am not sure), it is mathematically impossible to achieve the Obama college attainment goals without greatly expanding education of adult learners, yet the administration harasses the very people who are doing the most in achieving that goal, all because of a near pathological hatred of free market capitalism. The November elections should be interesting.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Two Approaches to Higher Education Reform
by Richard Vedder
Yesterday, I spent the day immersed in thinking and talking about the reform of higher education. I spent more than five hours in a meeting of supposedly some of the best and brightest minds at a little mini-conference on developing better methods of measurement in order to improve outcomes. It was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and included the presidents of four universities or university systems, key accreditors, two former Secretaries of Education, people representing academic trade associations, research groups, etc. 39 of us had a candid discussion. I then spent a couple of hours reading the views on higher education of an 18th century writer. Who had the most intelligent things to say? The 21st century individuals who live good lives thinking and managing higher education organizations, or the 18th century thinker who attended two universities for a few years and taught for a few more at one of them? The 18th century scholar wins, hands down.
The scholar was Adam Smith, and I was semi-compelled to read him in preparation for a forthcoming three day seminar I am attending that focuses on earlier thinkers on higher education. Here are a few insights from Smith, relevant to today:
1) Where faculty control the curriculum, they will teach what they want and when they want, often to the neglect of the student's best interest;
2) Tying job eligibility to diploma acquisition and even university attendance is a mistake, leading to "quackery, imposture, and exorbitant fees;"
3) Professors who have their salaries paid for from endowments (or, I would add, government subsdies) rather than directly from student fees are going to perform less well, as their income is not directly related to exertion used in teaching, as it is when the student pays the professor directly;
4) Where students are directed as to which professors to study with, there is less of a positive learning experience than where students choose the professors themselves;
5) restraints on academic mobility that colleges impose --moving between colleges, etc., are injurious to student and thus to social welfare.
Right on, Adam. Professors ignore their students in today's America because they can. They teach what they want, when they want, and to whom they want. The high cost of transfer between and often even within insitutions is the eqivalent of an academic tariff --crude protectionism. Credential inflation has pushed up college costs ("exorbitant fees.")
Meanwhile, back at the Gates Foundation, important (to themselves at least) leaders of American higher education kept discussing how to get better information and make use of it in reform, with much of the discussion showing how little we know about what is going on, and how little most university follks want to do about it. My little, apparently politically naive, suggestion that we change privacy legislation to permit (or even require) the IRS to give us post-graduation or attendance earnings data on students by college of attendance was met with disinterest by most, and by the comment from a White House official to the effect that was impossible, the IRS will not give up the data --the consumer be damned, we don't want to offend the mighty IRS. It is so discouraging. Bring back more Adam Smiths.
Yesterday, I spent the day immersed in thinking and talking about the reform of higher education. I spent more than five hours in a meeting of supposedly some of the best and brightest minds at a little mini-conference on developing better methods of measurement in order to improve outcomes. It was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and included the presidents of four universities or university systems, key accreditors, two former Secretaries of Education, people representing academic trade associations, research groups, etc. 39 of us had a candid discussion. I then spent a couple of hours reading the views on higher education of an 18th century writer. Who had the most intelligent things to say? The 21st century individuals who live good lives thinking and managing higher education organizations, or the 18th century thinker who attended two universities for a few years and taught for a few more at one of them? The 18th century scholar wins, hands down.
The scholar was Adam Smith, and I was semi-compelled to read him in preparation for a forthcoming three day seminar I am attending that focuses on earlier thinkers on higher education. Here are a few insights from Smith, relevant to today:
1) Where faculty control the curriculum, they will teach what they want and when they want, often to the neglect of the student's best interest;
2) Tying job eligibility to diploma acquisition and even university attendance is a mistake, leading to "quackery, imposture, and exorbitant fees;"
3) Professors who have their salaries paid for from endowments (or, I would add, government subsdies) rather than directly from student fees are going to perform less well, as their income is not directly related to exertion used in teaching, as it is when the student pays the professor directly;
4) Where students are directed as to which professors to study with, there is less of a positive learning experience than where students choose the professors themselves;
5) restraints on academic mobility that colleges impose --moving between colleges, etc., are injurious to student and thus to social welfare.
Right on, Adam. Professors ignore their students in today's America because they can. They teach what they want, when they want, and to whom they want. The high cost of transfer between and often even within insitutions is the eqivalent of an academic tariff --crude protectionism. Credential inflation has pushed up college costs ("exorbitant fees.")
Meanwhile, back at the Gates Foundation, important (to themselves at least) leaders of American higher education kept discussing how to get better information and make use of it in reform, with much of the discussion showing how little we know about what is going on, and how little most university follks want to do about it. My little, apparently politically naive, suggestion that we change privacy legislation to permit (or even require) the IRS to give us post-graduation or attendance earnings data on students by college of attendance was met with disinterest by most, and by the comment from a White House official to the effect that was impossible, the IRS will not give up the data --the consumer be damned, we don't want to offend the mighty IRS. It is so discouraging. Bring back more Adam Smiths.
Links for 4/30/10
Doug Lederman
Colleges, universities and other academic organizations received just shy of $2 billion in grants directed to them by individual members of Congress in the 2010 fiscal year…CATHERINE RAMPELL
The leading recipients of earmarks in academe resided, not surprisingly, in states represented by some of the most powerful people in Congress…
More than 70 percent of the members of the high school graduating class of 2009 were enrolled in college last October. That is the highest portion on record, which goes back to 1959…Lexington
some school districts have bureaucrats but no schools.Andrea Fuller
Indiana's community-college system appears to be the first in the nation to try an expedited path to an associate degree, one that would move students through in about one-third of the time it now takes an average community-college student to earn a two-year degree…
will enroll only students who have a good chance of succeeding…
Thursday, April 29, 2010
ED Opening Pandora’s Box
by Andrew Gillen
Inside Higher Ed reports that deputy under secretary of education Robert Shireman criticized the for profit sector in speech yesterday. Reeling off the amount of federal aid that each for profit school took in, one person commented:
But I’m more than a little perturbed that those asking this question of the for profit sector are not quite so enthusiastic when it comes to asking the same question of the public and non-profit sectors. I guess it doesn't really matter too much - whatever weapons end up being used in the apparent crusade against for profit colleges in the near future (gainful employment, debt limits, etc.) will be applied to public and non-profit colleges as well in the not too distant future. Given the greater adaptability of the for profit sector, these changes will have a much more devastating and long lasting effect on the public and non-profit sectors.
Inside Higher Ed reports that deputy under secretary of education Robert Shireman criticized the for profit sector in speech yesterday. Reeling off the amount of federal aid that each for profit school took in, one person commented:
"It was like fourth grade, with a teacher scolding students over their grades,"Shireman then asked
What are taxpayers and students getting in return for that investment?That is a very good question and I'm glad ED is asking it. In fact, I like to call it the 432 billion dollar question.
But I’m more than a little perturbed that those asking this question of the for profit sector are not quite so enthusiastic when it comes to asking the same question of the public and non-profit sectors. I guess it doesn't really matter too much - whatever weapons end up being used in the apparent crusade against for profit colleges in the near future (gainful employment, debt limits, etc.) will be applied to public and non-profit colleges as well in the not too distant future. Given the greater adaptability of the for profit sector, these changes will have a much more devastating and long lasting effect on the public and non-profit sectors.
New Leadership at the NCAA: Does It Matter?
by Richard Vedder
Mark Emmert, president of the U. of Washington, is the new president of the NCAA. This is being heralded as a victory for reformers, maintaining the more reformist leadership started under the late Myles Brand, himself a former president. The athletic directors are being subordinated as the academics assert some leadership. This, we are told, will keep alive the greater academic orientation begun under Brand's leadership.
It sounds nice, and it is true the NCAA did move to end some of the more egregious practices prevailing in the pre-Brand era. But, I for one, am not expecting much. Attending the College Sports Research Annual Meetings in Chapel Hill last week, I was reminded how college sports is broken on both the moral/ethical/academic and financial levels.
On ethics, I heard the story of Sally Dear, the SUNY Binghamton instructor who refused to bow to athletic department pressure and pass students who failed to attend large amounts of the course. The sad thing with her story was the complicity of so-called academic leaders in the move to preserve eligibility for some students who deserved to fail.
On finances, my sidekick Matt Denhart keeps showing me stats that show that not only are college sports a drain, but they are more so at the poorer (financially and in terms of academic reputation) schools than the rich ones --there is a highly regressive intercollegiate athletics (ICA) "tax" on the generally middle to lower income students attending wannabe athletic powers --like my own Ohio University or SUNY Binghamton.
Back to Mark Emmert. If he really wants to be bold, he can use the NCAA's cartel powers to scale back the financial excesses of ICA. He could call together the presidents of Football Bowl Series schools and propose that no school in the FBS division can subsidize ICA more than two percent of core revenues or five percent of tuition revenues collected from students. The financial burden that the Eastern Michigans of the world immpose upon their students is unconsciousable. Or, he could go conference by conference, asking, for example, for the Mid American Conference to meet with him to impose a conference rule similar to above, and promising help with the NCAA in transitioning to a lower level of competitive play --perhaps a five year phaseout at the FBS level.
It won't happen, however. College presidents look at the new 14 year NCAA contract on basketball and see dollar signs in their eyes. They believe they can get their hands on enough money to makes sports financially viable, at the same time they are paying coaches 10 times what their counterparts of a generation ago made. Sports was, is, and always will be a losing proposition for most schools. Why sell your soul and integrity to keep Bubba the Alum happy? Why? Because most typical university presidents lack certain intimate body parts needed to resist pressure, and they are whores. Plain and simple.
Mark Emmert, president of the U. of Washington, is the new president of the NCAA. This is being heralded as a victory for reformers, maintaining the more reformist leadership started under the late Myles Brand, himself a former president. The athletic directors are being subordinated as the academics assert some leadership. This, we are told, will keep alive the greater academic orientation begun under Brand's leadership.
It sounds nice, and it is true the NCAA did move to end some of the more egregious practices prevailing in the pre-Brand era. But, I for one, am not expecting much. Attending the College Sports Research Annual Meetings in Chapel Hill last week, I was reminded how college sports is broken on both the moral/ethical/academic and financial levels.
On ethics, I heard the story of Sally Dear, the SUNY Binghamton instructor who refused to bow to athletic department pressure and pass students who failed to attend large amounts of the course. The sad thing with her story was the complicity of so-called academic leaders in the move to preserve eligibility for some students who deserved to fail.
On finances, my sidekick Matt Denhart keeps showing me stats that show that not only are college sports a drain, but they are more so at the poorer (financially and in terms of academic reputation) schools than the rich ones --there is a highly regressive intercollegiate athletics (ICA) "tax" on the generally middle to lower income students attending wannabe athletic powers --like my own Ohio University or SUNY Binghamton.
Back to Mark Emmert. If he really wants to be bold, he can use the NCAA's cartel powers to scale back the financial excesses of ICA. He could call together the presidents of Football Bowl Series schools and propose that no school in the FBS division can subsidize ICA more than two percent of core revenues or five percent of tuition revenues collected from students. The financial burden that the Eastern Michigans of the world immpose upon their students is unconsciousable. Or, he could go conference by conference, asking, for example, for the Mid American Conference to meet with him to impose a conference rule similar to above, and promising help with the NCAA in transitioning to a lower level of competitive play --perhaps a five year phaseout at the FBS level.
It won't happen, however. College presidents look at the new 14 year NCAA contract on basketball and see dollar signs in their eyes. They believe they can get their hands on enough money to makes sports financially viable, at the same time they are paying coaches 10 times what their counterparts of a generation ago made. Sports was, is, and always will be a losing proposition for most schools. Why sell your soul and integrity to keep Bubba the Alum happy? Why? Because most typical university presidents lack certain intimate body parts needed to resist pressure, and they are whores. Plain and simple.
Links for 4/29/10
Lloyd Armstrong
many of our competitor nations are using this downturn to accelerate needed educational reform. We should do the same, instead of demanding more resources to support the status quoChad Aldeman
Blame the Baby Boom generation and the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California for the widespread use of admissions tests for college. With the passage of this document 50 years ago yesterday, California became the first state to codify which students were to be eligible for which higher education institution.MARGIE MASON HT: Tyler Cowen
According to a 2008 study on tobacco revenue in Indonesia, smokers spend more than 10 percent of their household income on cigarettes; that's three times more than they spend on education-related expenses such as school fees and books.Kimberly Vanderlaan
the analogy of marriage when he speaks about the tenure process…
the faculty member is generally expected, at least tacitly, to do more to uphold her end of the prospective union than the institution—like any "good" wife. But I find myself wondering why any right-minded woman would subject herself to the kind of relationship that, quite frankly, would be considered abusive by any rational, healthy, objective standard of assessment in the real world…
My "fiancé" is selfish and unreasonably demanding; he enforces inequitable distribution of labor; he is fiscally, physically, and emotionally unsupportive; and he treats me with callous indifference at best and outright abasement at worst….
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Is the Business Model of Higher Ed Broken?
by Daniel L. Bennett
Is the Business Model of Higher Ed Broken? That was the supposed resolution at last night's the Miller Center for Public Affairs national debate that featured presidents from 4 different sectors. Somewhat surprisingly, Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, and William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, argued in favor of the proposition, while Richard C. Levin, president of Yale University, and Daniel M. Hamburger, president and chief executive of DeVry Inc., argued against it.
After listening to the debate, I realize that the reason I was somewhat surprised about the sides taken was that the debate didn't focus much on the business operations of colleges and universities, but rather the taxpayer subsidization of them. Presidents Kirwan and Mellow decried the current system because it isn't subsidizing their schools to an extent that keeps up with their spending spree. Ms. Mellow appeared particularly upset about the fact that she has to compete with enterprises such as Mr. Hamburger's Devry for students and the federal aid dollars that follow them, making it obvious of her disdain for the sector as a whole by repeatedly stating that it reaps huge profits for its shareholders and implying that her school would plough back into the school for the supposed benefit of students. This concept is exactly what got us into this mess anyhow (see papers from Bob Martin and my colleague, Andrew Gillen).
On the other side of the debate, Presidents Levin and Hamburger seemed content with the current system, espousing enthusiasm for the diversity of and competition among institutions in the US. Mr. Levin, of course, doesn't really have to worry about public subsidization and competition much as he could fill his limited number of seats every year even if he quadrupled tuition at Yale. Mr. Hamburger's schools are focused on controlling costs and creating wealth, and as such, he has the private capitalization to pursue capacity growth and compete with the public sector institutions for students and the student aid subsidies that follow them. Mr. Hamburger correctly noted that his schools have been successful at meeting the needs of the market that have been unmet by a public sector (i.e. community colleges) that doesn't have the resources to expand capacity, citing the long wait lists for nursing programs at public sector institutions as a great example.
In my own opinion, in the context of the debate, yes the business model is broken and college has become increasingly unaffordable for many American families. The problem is not however that we are not subsidizing higher education enough with taxpayer money (despite that being one of the pretexts of the debate), but rather that we are subsidizing it too much. The state subsidy model worked pretty well in keeping costs under control until the federal government came onto the scene with massive outlays for student aid that has been a significant driver of the rapid expansion of campuses and explosion in costs. None of the participants touched on this topic, but rather stuck to the normal rhetoric of college education bestowing great economic returns and other supposed spillover effects, and that the only way to remain globally competitive is by having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
The Chronicle has additional coverage of the event.
Is the Business Model of Higher Ed Broken? That was the supposed resolution at last night's the Miller Center for Public Affairs national debate that featured presidents from 4 different sectors. Somewhat surprisingly, Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, and William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, argued in favor of the proposition, while Richard C. Levin, president of Yale University, and Daniel M. Hamburger, president and chief executive of DeVry Inc., argued against it.
After listening to the debate, I realize that the reason I was somewhat surprised about the sides taken was that the debate didn't focus much on the business operations of colleges and universities, but rather the taxpayer subsidization of them. Presidents Kirwan and Mellow decried the current system because it isn't subsidizing their schools to an extent that keeps up with their spending spree. Ms. Mellow appeared particularly upset about the fact that she has to compete with enterprises such as Mr. Hamburger's Devry for students and the federal aid dollars that follow them, making it obvious of her disdain for the sector as a whole by repeatedly stating that it reaps huge profits for its shareholders and implying that her school would plough back into the school for the supposed benefit of students. This concept is exactly what got us into this mess anyhow (see papers from Bob Martin and my colleague, Andrew Gillen).
On the other side of the debate, Presidents Levin and Hamburger seemed content with the current system, espousing enthusiasm for the diversity of and competition among institutions in the US. Mr. Levin, of course, doesn't really have to worry about public subsidization and competition much as he could fill his limited number of seats every year even if he quadrupled tuition at Yale. Mr. Hamburger's schools are focused on controlling costs and creating wealth, and as such, he has the private capitalization to pursue capacity growth and compete with the public sector institutions for students and the student aid subsidies that follow them. Mr. Hamburger correctly noted that his schools have been successful at meeting the needs of the market that have been unmet by a public sector (i.e. community colleges) that doesn't have the resources to expand capacity, citing the long wait lists for nursing programs at public sector institutions as a great example.
In my own opinion, in the context of the debate, yes the business model is broken and college has become increasingly unaffordable for many American families. The problem is not however that we are not subsidizing higher education enough with taxpayer money (despite that being one of the pretexts of the debate), but rather that we are subsidizing it too much. The state subsidy model worked pretty well in keeping costs under control until the federal government came onto the scene with massive outlays for student aid that has been a significant driver of the rapid expansion of campuses and explosion in costs. None of the participants touched on this topic, but rather stuck to the normal rhetoric of college education bestowing great economic returns and other supposed spillover effects, and that the only way to remain globally competitive is by having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
The Chronicle has additional coverage of the event.
Links for 4/28/10
Thomas Frey
The one aspect of Roman society that was remarkably absent was the lack of Roman mathematicians… Roman society was being held hostage by its systems. In this case, it was their numbering system – Roman numerals.Tim Ranzetta
The feature that made Roman numerals so inferior was that each number lacked specific numeric positioning, making each number more of an equation than a single integer. The added layer of complexity prevented people from doing higher math.
Roman numerals were a system problem, and a huge one at that. They prevented an entire civilization from furthering the field of math and science.
The critical question we should be asking is, “What systems do we employ today that are the equivalent of Roman numerals, preventing us from doing great things?”…
To many, our current systems for accreditation are the modern day equivalent to Roman numerals – slow, stodgy, and built around rules that are steeped in tradition. A system ripe for remodeling.
Alabama Prepaid College Tuition Plan Bailed Out To The Tune Of Half A Billion DollarsBarbara Kiviat
American consumerism is a force to be reckoned with. Turn a few hundred million of the world's most sophisticated shoppers loose on an industry, and watch companies scramble after their business. In realms from washing machines to stock trades, quality goes up and price comes down as companies look for an edge over the next guy to win customer dollars.Lawrence P. Ward via Jack Stripling
Not in health care [AG: or Higher Ed] We are left with the same opaque system of perverse incentives--paying providers for more tests and procedures, not necessarily effective ones. And we lack even the most basic element of the free market: price information…
There are many reasons health care costs are spiraling out of control, but the simplest one to understand is this: nobody knows what anything costs. Providers get paid through a tangle of insurance-company agreements and billing schedules that change from patient to patient. No wonder a hospital can sneak a $100 box of Kleenex onto your bill and the price of an MRI can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. If you don't know what something costs, you can't know if it costs too much…
“the price of any health care service is whatever they can get," says Representative Steve Kagen, a doctor who ran a practice for 25 years before being elected to Congress…
coming up with an interesting degree program is probably the easiest part,” he said. “Whether or not it’s relevant to students beyond our own minds is a question we hadn’t answered.”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
CCAP in the News
Richard Vedder was quote extensively in this article for MarketWatch discussing a decision that many parents face: whether to pay for their continued education, or to save for their kids. (The story was also covered in the Wall Street Journal):
"Some people make the decision to do more school kind of naively assuming it will assure them a good job and higher income than they make now," said economist Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability & Productivity. "I had a guy cut a tree down for me the other day with a master's degree in history."Richard Vedder was quoted in this Chronicle of Higher Education article discussing a study on disadvantaged students and their college choice:
Adults who consider further education have to look at it as an investment, Vedder said.
"It's a human capital investment decision," Vedder said. "Assuming you are thinking about returning to [school] solely for making money then you have to weigh the expected increase in your income and how long you expect to earn that income as opposed to the costs."
While the data suggest that more education is good for workers, Vedder cautions that such estimates are only averages, and individual experiences can vary whether the student is a child or parent.
"If you are going to get a master's degree in history it will probably have a smaller payoff than if you get an MBA," Vedder said. "It's often very hard to assess what the gains will be from school."
If parents decide to send themselves back to school, they need to consider the cost of tuition fees, as well as income forgone while training. Often adult students have to reduce their work at a regular job, Vedder said.
"There is a growing number of Americans with a fairly good-sized student-loan debt," Vedder said. "When students plan to go to college they should weigh their own prospects."
Richard K. Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, calls the paper "very interesting and generally well done." But he offers a few concerns.Daniel Bennett was cited in this FrumForum post:
"The authors fail to mention the fact that for most, higher education is both a consumption and an investment purchase," Mr. Vedder writes. "Perhaps all the authors are saying, in effect, is that for those who actually attend college (mostly middle-class kids), college is to a considerable extent an exercise in socialization and recreation, whereas for nonattendees from less-advantaged backgrounds, higher education is considered mostly an investment good. This is not inconsistent with economists' conceptualization of individuals trying to maximize their satisfaction in life."
It also would have been better, Mr. Vedder suggests, for the scholars to have considered variations in the quality of colleges attended by students of different college-going propensities.
Over the past ten years, the cost of college has risen by more than double the rate of inflation. This is because payrolls have mushroomed as staff sizes for administrative positions have soared. Daniel L. Bennett, in an article for Forbes last summer entitled “Bureaucrat U”, found that colleges have spent the past decade hiring armies of administrative staff, and creating positions like “recreation therapist” at the University of Florida and a “director of Fraternity and Sorority Life” at the University of Maryland. By 2014, Mr. Bennett notes, there will be more administrative employees at America’s colleges than teachers.
Mr. Bennett describes academia as a “sellers market,” in which America’s major colleges work together to ensure a Soviet-style dissemination of information to the public. Mr. Bennett would like to see information about the value of each college’s education “publicly available in a digestible manner.”
Links for 4/27/10
Forrest Hinton
this kind of competition among elementary and middle school teachers isn’t limited to bulletin boards. Teachers face pressure from their principals and peers to pull off impeccable school plays, make beautiful outdoor gardens, and stylize their doorframes in ways Van Gogh couldn’t imagine. The trouble with all of this is that teachers are competing to be the best in creating the illusion of learning rather than focusing their energies and resources on actually helping students learn.DANIEL HAMERMESH
The most common nationality of the students in my undergraduate class in the Netherlands is German. They pay the same fees as Dutch students. The same would be true for Dutch students in Germany — or in most other EU countries — under the agreements referred to as the Bologna Process…Peter Schmidt
The problem is that fees never cover average costs. Taxpayers in the net-receiving countries subsidize the education of net-sending countries’ students. I don’t see how this can be a stable equilibrium politically…
Mr. Bastedo and Mr. Bowman say, "clearly, rankings drive reputation, and not the other way around," with the reputations of institutions appearing to change "in concert with the introduction and widespread use of a particular rankings system."David Mulry
"From our perspective," the paper says, "the inclusion of reputation largely serves to maintain the status quo, establishing the credibility of the rankings and ensuring stability in results over time." But, given how susceptible reputational assessments are to anchoring effects and the close correlation between reputation scores and rankings, "reputation scores may add relatively little to the value of university rankings systems,"…
Students, however, are often not the main problem for the community-college professor. Administrators are.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Links for 4/26/10
I'm back in town and catching up, which means Links are back!
Patrick Henry Winston
Patrick Henry Winston
relative to the rest of the economy, MIT’s educational productivity has lagged behind by a factor of about 2.75 over the past 50 years.Andrew J. Coulson
I’m not really surprised. The last great technical contribution to education was the development of fast, cheap copying machines and before that the invention of the printing press in 1440. I don’t count computers, because I think that, for the most part, they just make us stupid. Education remains labor intensive out of proportion to just about everything else…
My fall subject has two lectures, two recitations, and one tutorial in each of fourteen weeks. Subtracting out holidays, quizzes, and short weeks, that leaves about 60 units of instruction. $50,000 / 8 / 60 ≅ $100, which is about the price of an excellent ticket for a performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. If I flatter myself and suppose that my lectures are twice as valuable as the other forms of contact, and note that they last 50 minutes, not 60, then a little algebra says they cost each student about $175 per hour. The best tickets at the Metropolitan Opera and good tickets at Rolling Stones Concerts cost about that per hour.
That’s why I think I’m obligated to practice my lectures more than ever. Opera singers and the Stones practice a lot for their expensive performances, so I figure I should, too.
Think carefully about this. What entrepreneur would enter an industry whose total customer base is confined to a few thousand families in a single U.S. city and which has a rigid price control set at half the spending level of a government protected monopoly operating in that same city?Jeffrey Brown, Stephen G. Dimmock, Jun-Koo Kang, Scott Weisbenner
That is not test of market forces.
we find that universities with larger negative endowment shocks are relatively more likely to: (1) reduce support staff (e.g., secretaries) and maintenance, but not administrators; (2) among less selective institutions, reduce expenditures on tenure-system faculty while increasing the average salary of adjuncts/lecturers; (3) make larger cuts to tenure-system faculty and secretarial support when their endowment portfolio is less liquid (i.e. higher allocations to alternative assets such as hedge funds); and (4) among more selective universities, reduce financial aid for students the following Fall and enroll fewer freshmen.Thomas Frey via Brett Greene
Colleges are pricing themselves out of existence…
Colleges see themselves operating in a closed system where their main form of competition comes from other colleges. However, the disruptive forces that will launch the next-generation learning revolution will necessarily happen outside existing colleges…
Colleges have long enjoyed the government-sanctioned protections of accreditation and degree-granting ability. This too is about to come under attack. Companies are playing for major stakes, and very little is off-limits in corporate America…
The needs of the student will stop evolving around the needs of the college, and will the cost of learning plummeting, most barriers will go away, making education far more accessible…
Friday, April 23, 2010
What Private College Tuition Really Buys You
by Daniel L. Bennett
CCAP has been recently been blogging on the matter of grade inflation (here, here and here). While CCAP has been looking specifically at the Colleges of Education in an effort to examine the trickle down effects into our K-12 education system, we are not the only ones investigating grade inflation. Research from Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy have uncovered some interested data which helps explain what one really gets for their money when choosing to attend a selective private college over a public one. They found that:
CCAP has been recently been blogging on the matter of grade inflation (here, here and here). While CCAP has been looking specifically at the Colleges of Education in an effort to examine the trickle down effects into our K-12 education system, we are not the only ones investigating grade inflation. Research from Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy have uncovered some interested data which helps explain what one really gets for their money when choosing to attend a selective private college over a public one. They found that:
Currently at private colleges and universities in our database, the average GPA is 3.3. At public schools, it is 3.0In other words, private college tuition is buying, on average, higher grades, admission to top professional and graduate programs, and a cut in line for job openings, according to Rojstaczer and Healy.
Since the evidence indicates that private schools in general educate students no better than public schools...private schools are apparently conferring small but measurable advantages to their students by more generous grading. Private schools also have on average students from wealthier families, and the effect of our nation’s ad hoc grading policy is to confer unfair advantages to those with the most money.
It is perhaps easy to see why graduates from certain private schools dominate placement in top medical schools, law schools, business schools, and why certain private schools are overrepresented in Ph.D. study. They grade easier and there is a tendency for graduate schools, professional schools, and some employers to confer extra stature to those who have attended selective private schools. Also, the fact that students from private schools tend to come from wealthier homes means they can stay in school longer.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Career College Association vs. Dept of Education, Round 2...Fight
by Daniel L. Bennett
Yesterday, I blogged about the double standards of the Obama Administration in its ruthless pursuit of strangling the for-profit education industry with a gainful employment metric. The Career College Association sent a detailed letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan denouncing the current proposed metric, providing evidence from research that it commissioned from Charles Rivers Consulting and University of Chicago economist Jonathan Guryan which indicates that
Yesterday, I blogged about the double standards of the Obama Administration in its ruthless pursuit of strangling the for-profit education industry with a gainful employment metric. The Career College Association sent a detailed letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan denouncing the current proposed metric, providing evidence from research that it commissioned from Charles Rivers Consulting and University of Chicago economist Jonathan Guryan which indicates that
18 percent of for-profit postsecondary programs would not satisfy the debt limit requirement of the gainful employment proposalThe research also indicated that:
33 percent of students in for-profit postsecondary programs would be impacted.
[and] that by 2020, approximately 5.4 million students who are on track to attend programs would be denied access by the proposed regulation
Because the limits on borrowing do not vary with the length of program, longer programs would be more severely impacted.The reports author, Dr. Guryan, described additional problems with the Department's proposed metric that are similar to issues that I mentioned in a post back in January, such as the regulation:
approximately 40 percent of students in 2- and 4-year programs would be impacted. We also estimate that the impact would not be limited to a few areas of study, but would impact a wide variety of programs.
focuses on the ability of recent graduates to repay loans in the early years of their post-schooling careers.The report concludes that:
it cannot logically make sense to say that the average student cannot afford to pay 8 percent of her annual earnings to cover student loans for 10 years if those loans paid for education that raised her earnings more than 8 percent each year for the rest of her working life.
A policy aimed at protecting students would compare the benefits of education and the costs of education. A key feature of education is that the costs are paid up front, both in terms of foregone earnings and tuition, and the benefits accrue over the entire working life. To focus
exclusively on the short-term benefits is to ignore the long-term benefits
the premise of limiting borrowing for education based on early-career earnings is inappropriate and would be harmful to low-income students who rely on student loans for access to education beyond high school.
[and] The use of the 10-year repayment length is another way that the regulation would overweight the early costs of education and ignore the future benefits.
Our analysis suggests that the ―unintended consequences‖—cutting off
access to hundreds of thousands of students who want postsecondary education—will be much more substantial than the intended consequence, which we believe to be—though we are not certain—reducing the number of students who over borrow.
To start, the Department of Education has not clearly defined what the problem is that the
regulation aims to address.
it should not be assumed that public postsecondary institutions, particularly
community colleges, would absorb these students.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Double Standards
by Daniel L. Bennett
Inside Higher Ed ran a story on gainful employment this morning, outlining the Department of Education's (ED) proposal to tie eligibility for Title IV funding to an arbitrary debt to income ratio for vocationally-oriented schools. Basically, colleges offering training in occupationally-specified fields would become ineligible for federal student aid programs if their average student debt exceeded 8% of the supposed entry level salary for a given occupation, as determined by BLS occupational wage data (specifically, the 25th percent of earners). The rumor mill has recently suggested that ED is softening its approach a bit, by making an exception to the rule for programs with completion rates above 50% and job placement rates above 70%.
Still, ED seems determined to plunge forward with the misguided policy that will cause more harm than good. I've written in this space several times on the negative implications of such policies and have an article coming out in next month's Career College Central magazine discussing the policy. To rehash briefly, the ED proposal, if retro-acted to 2003, would mean that
Why is it that students attending "preferred" institutions and pursuing so-called traditional education, are enabled to accrue huge amounts of student debt and be bailed out by the taxpayers when they are unable to find gainful employment after college, while students attending career colleges and pursuing vocationally-oriented education are demonized? Why is it that taxpayers are put on the hook for the institutions failing to prepare these individuals for the real world in the case of public and non-profit education, while we attack and hold accountable the institutions themselves in the case of for-profit education? This is a double standard that is based on nothing more than an ideological philosophy that profit is a 4 letter word and that the public and non-profit spheres are somehow pursuing the greater good.
Inside Higher Ed ran a story on gainful employment this morning, outlining the Department of Education's (ED) proposal to tie eligibility for Title IV funding to an arbitrary debt to income ratio for vocationally-oriented schools. Basically, colleges offering training in occupationally-specified fields would become ineligible for federal student aid programs if their average student debt exceeded 8% of the supposed entry level salary for a given occupation, as determined by BLS occupational wage data (specifically, the 25th percent of earners). The rumor mill has recently suggested that ED is softening its approach a bit, by making an exception to the rule for programs with completion rates above 50% and job placement rates above 70%.
Still, ED seems determined to plunge forward with the misguided policy that will cause more harm than good. I've written in this space several times on the negative implications of such policies and have an article coming out in next month's Career College Central magazine discussing the policy. To rehash briefly, the ED proposal, if retro-acted to 2003, would mean that
students pursuing 7 of 10 growing occupations would not have been able to borrow as much to pay for their training in 2008 as they were able to borrow in 2003, in real inflation-adjusted terms. Students pursuing training in the other 3 occupations would not have much more ability to borrow in 2008 than they did 5 years prior.the end result will be a reduction of educational options and access for low income and minority students, and a shortage of qualified employees to fill the demands of the labor forceIn a separate post, I applied the same metric to the law profession and found that
the maximum total debt a law student could borrow [in 2008] would have been just under $44,000, or 2.3% more than he/she could have borrowed in 2003 after adjusting for inflation. Given the ED's proposal, this would also include any debt incurred as an undergrad, unless the student managed to pay it off before starting law school. FYI, the average law school tuition was just under $28,000 in 2007-08.Despite its rhetoric to the contrary, I increasingly believe that the current administration is pursuing policies that are intentionally aimed at harming for-profit education providers. The gainful employment proposal obviously specifically targets the for-profit industry and is counterintuitive to the administration's stated goals that it wants to make college more affordable and accessible. Compare this proposal to the Income-Based Repayment plan that was recently signed by Obama, which provides borrowers with an option to limit their student debt payment to 10% of their income, after accounting for a living deduction (150% of the poverty level).
Why is it that students attending "preferred" institutions and pursuing so-called traditional education, are enabled to accrue huge amounts of student debt and be bailed out by the taxpayers when they are unable to find gainful employment after college, while students attending career colleges and pursuing vocationally-oriented education are demonized? Why is it that taxpayers are put on the hook for the institutions failing to prepare these individuals for the real world in the case of public and non-profit education, while we attack and hold accountable the institutions themselves in the case of for-profit education? This is a double standard that is based on nothing more than an ideological philosophy that profit is a 4 letter word and that the public and non-profit spheres are somehow pursuing the greater good.
Taxing the Poor to Entertain the Rich
By Richard Vedder
My Chief Whiz Kid Matt Denhart and I are traveling to Chapel Hill, NC, tomorrow to speak at the annual conference of the College Sports Research Institute. In our paper, we are going to argue that the growing financial burden of intercollegiate athletics (ICA) is very unevenly distributed, and that students at mostly relatively poor state schools pay a high "tax" for ICA, while those attending wealthier flagship universities face very little in the way of sports "taxation." In short, there is a highly regressive ICA tax nationwide that is of a consequential magnitude.
Specifically, big-time sports schools like Ohio State or the University of Texas roughly break even from ICA, and there is little university subsidy. These schools mostly are also the prestige flagship institutions in their state that draw students from mostly upper middle class, affluent families. The second tier state institutions in the state, say Eastern Michigan University, or my own Ohio University, aspire to make it big in ICA but their aspirations are not matched by revenues (e.g., lower attendance, fewer big-time TV appearances), so they end up subsidizing ICA a lot --and ultimately, since state governments do not generally provide special athletic subsidies, the burden of the cost falls on the students. These schools tend to have a higher proportion of lower income students, those receiving Pell Grants.
Compare the University of Michigan with Eastern Michigan University (EMU), whose stadium is less than six miles away from the Big House in Ann Arbor. At EMU nearly 39 percent of students are on Pell Grants, triple the proportion at the U of M. The students there on average are considerably poorer. Yet the huge $20 million subsidy at EMU for sports is equal to nearly 16 percent of tuition revenue. One could say there is a 16 percent ICA tuition tax at EMU. By contrast, at the relatively well to do (not only in terms of student body but in terms of university endowment) University of Michigan, that ICA tax is zero. The burden of intercollegiate athletic varies a lot --and it burdens the students who struggle the most financially to attend college. If one views big time ICA support at wannabe schools like EMU largely as a consequence of pressure from affluent alumni, one could say we are taxing the poor to entertain the rich.
The example above is not an isolated example. Let's compare entire athletic conferences. The Big Ten Conference serves a geographic area highly similar to that of the Mid American Conference. In the Big Ten, the average ICA tuition tax is under one percent, while in the MAC it approaches 15 percent. Yet the proportion of Pell Grant recipients in the student population averages just 16 percent in the Big Ten (excluding private Northwestern), compared with 27 percent in the MAC. There are four athletic conferences besides the MAC where the ICA tuition tax is 13.8 percent or more, while there four other conferences besides the Big Ten where the subsidy averages four percent or less. The four conferences where the average Pell Grant recipients are under 20 percent of the enrollment all have average tuition taxes of under four percent; the four conferences where there are over 25 percent Pell Grant recipients all have average tuition taxes exceeding 13.8 percent.
So is ICA truly a sizable financial issue for American higher education? The answer depends a lot on the schools. But we can say that on balance the subsidization of ICA is regressive in nature, burdening the poor more than the rich. We will post our entire study on the CCAP web site shortly.
My Chief Whiz Kid Matt Denhart and I are traveling to Chapel Hill, NC, tomorrow to speak at the annual conference of the College Sports Research Institute. In our paper, we are going to argue that the growing financial burden of intercollegiate athletics (ICA) is very unevenly distributed, and that students at mostly relatively poor state schools pay a high "tax" for ICA, while those attending wealthier flagship universities face very little in the way of sports "taxation." In short, there is a highly regressive ICA tax nationwide that is of a consequential magnitude.
Specifically, big-time sports schools like Ohio State or the University of Texas roughly break even from ICA, and there is little university subsidy. These schools mostly are also the prestige flagship institutions in their state that draw students from mostly upper middle class, affluent families. The second tier state institutions in the state, say Eastern Michigan University, or my own Ohio University, aspire to make it big in ICA but their aspirations are not matched by revenues (e.g., lower attendance, fewer big-time TV appearances), so they end up subsidizing ICA a lot --and ultimately, since state governments do not generally provide special athletic subsidies, the burden of the cost falls on the students. These schools tend to have a higher proportion of lower income students, those receiving Pell Grants.
Compare the University of Michigan with Eastern Michigan University (EMU), whose stadium is less than six miles away from the Big House in Ann Arbor. At EMU nearly 39 percent of students are on Pell Grants, triple the proportion at the U of M. The students there on average are considerably poorer. Yet the huge $20 million subsidy at EMU for sports is equal to nearly 16 percent of tuition revenue. One could say there is a 16 percent ICA tuition tax at EMU. By contrast, at the relatively well to do (not only in terms of student body but in terms of university endowment) University of Michigan, that ICA tax is zero. The burden of intercollegiate athletic varies a lot --and it burdens the students who struggle the most financially to attend college. If one views big time ICA support at wannabe schools like EMU largely as a consequence of pressure from affluent alumni, one could say we are taxing the poor to entertain the rich.
The example above is not an isolated example. Let's compare entire athletic conferences. The Big Ten Conference serves a geographic area highly similar to that of the Mid American Conference. In the Big Ten, the average ICA tuition tax is under one percent, while in the MAC it approaches 15 percent. Yet the proportion of Pell Grant recipients in the student population averages just 16 percent in the Big Ten (excluding private Northwestern), compared with 27 percent in the MAC. There are four athletic conferences besides the MAC where the ICA tuition tax is 13.8 percent or more, while there four other conferences besides the Big Ten where the subsidy averages four percent or less. The four conferences where the average Pell Grant recipients are under 20 percent of the enrollment all have average tuition taxes of under four percent; the four conferences where there are over 25 percent Pell Grant recipients all have average tuition taxes exceeding 13.8 percent.
So is ICA truly a sizable financial issue for American higher education? The answer depends a lot on the schools. But we can say that on balance the subsidization of ICA is regressive in nature, burdening the poor more than the rich. We will post our entire study on the CCAP web site shortly.
Online Education is Lurking
by Daniel L. Bennett
Our friend Jane Shaw of the Pope Center wrote an exceptional essay about how online education is lurking in the background, waiting for its moment to revolutionize college education as we now know it. The full piece is worth reading, but here are a few excerpts.
Our friend Jane Shaw of the Pope Center wrote an exceptional essay about how online education is lurking in the background, waiting for its moment to revolutionize college education as we now know it. The full piece is worth reading, but here are a few excerpts.
Facing such resistance, online education is more likely to grow stealthily, perhaps below the radar of most colleges and perhaps over a long time.
Rather, online teaching is going to make inroads in ways that no one fully notices now or can predict for the future. Unconventional students, from homeschoolers to housewives, are already using it. And while everyone notices the big for-profits, lurking in the sidelines are companies like Straighterline.com, which started to offer courses much more cheaply than the University of Phoenix but couldn’t get accreditation. Straighterline is working with accredited universities now, but it is undoubtedly poised to sell directly to consumers if the situation is right.
I’m not ready to make predictions, but I see a lot of behind-the-scenes entrepreneurial activity by both producers and consumers in the education field. The great universities of this country should be on their guard, lest they become the RCAs and DECs of 2020.
The Obama Administration's War on College Students
By Richard Vedder
The Obama Administration is letting its ideology get in the way of intelligent governance, making life miserable for many current and prospective college students. The president, I believe, genuinely dislikes private enterprise and is a socialist who believes government generally can do things better and more efficiently than the private sector. The President's ideology is wildly out of step with the feelings of a majority of the American people, but he is doing an awful lot of damage nonetheless, as Congress is on a politically suicidal spree to enact much of the Obama vision despite near certain massive reputation by the people this fall.
With respect to colleges, the first major anti-student act was the elimination of the program of federally subsidized private loans and substituting it with an expanded directed student loan program. A monopoly government lender almost certainly will provide counseling and other services to students at the the quality of services provided by other monopolists --the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Post Office, etc. (even the Post Office faces increased competition though, and has become somewhat more consumer friendly as a consequence).Proponents of this move say that vast amounts will be saved by having a monopoly provider, the government, and those savings will fund more Pell Grants. I believe the savings in some ultimate sense are illusionary, no matter what the government bookkeepers say. Costs are being moved away from the federal government onto the backs of students and possibly universities.
The second abomination has been discussed recently in this space by both Daniel Bennett and myself. Proposed Department of Education rules will require on-line providers to get state licensing approval in every single state they operate. Dick Bishirjian of Yorktown U. estimates the cost of this could well reach $15 million, which, of course, would be passed onto students in the form of higher tuition. This is a triple outrage.
First, it is an outrage to trammel on the spirit of our Constitution by imposing interstate barriers to trade. Our nation's strength was developed in part because of constitutional provisions barring state government constraint of trade --Supreme Court decisions beginning with at least Gibbons v. Ogden nearly two centuries ago strengthened this right of individuals to trade and barter and serve customers in multiple jurisdictions without state governmental interference.
Second, huge barriers to entry are being created that will make it nearly impossible for small, innovative for profit providers to compete in the on-line market. It gives large providers like the U. of Phoenix an unfair advantage over smaller providers. Why? Cannot a single accrediting agency give approval that would hold all over the nation, or at least in every state covered by the regional accrediting agency?
Third, the action will hurt in particular the poor and minorities that cannot afford to attend expensive residential universities. It is anti-American Dream, anti-equal opportunity.
The Obama Administration is letting its ideology get in the way of intelligent governance, making life miserable for many current and prospective college students. The president, I believe, genuinely dislikes private enterprise and is a socialist who believes government generally can do things better and more efficiently than the private sector. The President's ideology is wildly out of step with the feelings of a majority of the American people, but he is doing an awful lot of damage nonetheless, as Congress is on a politically suicidal spree to enact much of the Obama vision despite near certain massive reputation by the people this fall.
With respect to colleges, the first major anti-student act was the elimination of the program of federally subsidized private loans and substituting it with an expanded directed student loan program. A monopoly government lender almost certainly will provide counseling and other services to students at the the quality of services provided by other monopolists --the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Post Office, etc. (even the Post Office faces increased competition though, and has become somewhat more consumer friendly as a consequence).Proponents of this move say that vast amounts will be saved by having a monopoly provider, the government, and those savings will fund more Pell Grants. I believe the savings in some ultimate sense are illusionary, no matter what the government bookkeepers say. Costs are being moved away from the federal government onto the backs of students and possibly universities.
The second abomination has been discussed recently in this space by both Daniel Bennett and myself. Proposed Department of Education rules will require on-line providers to get state licensing approval in every single state they operate. Dick Bishirjian of Yorktown U. estimates the cost of this could well reach $15 million, which, of course, would be passed onto students in the form of higher tuition. This is a triple outrage.
First, it is an outrage to trammel on the spirit of our Constitution by imposing interstate barriers to trade. Our nation's strength was developed in part because of constitutional provisions barring state government constraint of trade --Supreme Court decisions beginning with at least Gibbons v. Ogden nearly two centuries ago strengthened this right of individuals to trade and barter and serve customers in multiple jurisdictions without state governmental interference.
Second, huge barriers to entry are being created that will make it nearly impossible for small, innovative for profit providers to compete in the on-line market. It gives large providers like the U. of Phoenix an unfair advantage over smaller providers. Why? Cannot a single accrediting agency give approval that would hold all over the nation, or at least in every state covered by the regional accrediting agency?
Third, the action will hurt in particular the poor and minorities that cannot afford to attend expensive residential universities. It is anti-American Dream, anti-equal opportunity.
CCAP on YouTube
In the third installment of the CCAP Video Series we discuss Colleges of Education. You can find all CCAP Videos here at the CCAP YouTube Channel
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Want to Use Technology to Make College More Affordable, Don't Impose Onerous Regulations
by Daniel L. Bennett
Dick Bishirjian, the president of Yorktown University (an online liberal arts college), has reason to be fired up about the policy of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools that requires:
This is a misguided policy that would be a huge setback to the effort to make college more affordable and accessible. That's because technology can be utilized to offer educational courses and programs at a significantly lower marginal cost and greater efficiency than at a centralized campus. As online education improves and becomes more widely accepted, the competition will likely intensify with the result being even greater efficiency and lower costs for students.
Online education also provides students with greater flexibility of where and when to "attend class," reducing many of the barriers that stand in the way of non-traditional students enrolling in and completing college. By imposing additional onerous regulatory and administrative burdens on online providers, the ED would not only help fuel rapidly rising tuition costs, but also deter much needed competition.
Dick Bishirjian, the president of Yorktown University (an online liberal arts college), has reason to be fired up about the policy of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools that requires:
all of its accredited members to be authorized to operate in all the states where they have students either in online or traditional coursesApparently, the Department of Education (ED) is considering developing a similar policy that would be applicable to all accredited institutions. In other words, a college would need to go through the bureaucratic red tape to become licensed to operate in every state in which it has at least one student enrolled, adding vast sums of legal and administrative costs.
This is a misguided policy that would be a huge setback to the effort to make college more affordable and accessible. That's because technology can be utilized to offer educational courses and programs at a significantly lower marginal cost and greater efficiency than at a centralized campus. As online education improves and becomes more widely accepted, the competition will likely intensify with the result being even greater efficiency and lower costs for students.
Online education also provides students with greater flexibility of where and when to "attend class," reducing many of the barriers that stand in the way of non-traditional students enrolling in and completing college. By imposing additional onerous regulatory and administrative burdens on online providers, the ED would not only help fuel rapidly rising tuition costs, but also deter much needed competition.
Monday, April 19, 2010
If Community Colleges Want to Improve Graduation Rates, They Should Analyze the Career College Model
by Daniel L. Bennett
Community college officials and other interested parties gathered this past weekend for the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges. From what I've read (here, here), the topic du jour was how to improve completion rates.
I know that some in the education community are under the illusion that their industry is in some way on a higher moral ground, making it therefore not appropriate to think of higher education in business or market terms. But I really must question whether anyone among the community college reform crowd has considered conducting a competitive market analysis to determine what its top competitors, the for-profit career colleges, are doing that enables them to retain and graduate demographically-similar students at much higher rates than the public community college sector, while charging higher out-of-pocket tuition.
I think they would find that the career colleges are specialized service providers that are focused on meeting the needs of their customers. They generally are focused on helping their students succeed by developing relationships with them in order to be in the position to identify potential issues that might lead to a student dropping out of school - before it happens. This allows college officials to step in when appropriate to help the students try to overcome the issues before a student drops out. Career colleges are also specialized service providers that aren't trying to offer a large number of educational programs and amenities in order to meet every single educational objective in a community (be all things to all people). Rather, they offer a limited number of career-specific training programs in fields for which there is likely a local demand for skilled workers.
Community college officials and other interested parties gathered this past weekend for the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges. From what I've read (here, here), the topic du jour was how to improve completion rates.
I know that some in the education community are under the illusion that their industry is in some way on a higher moral ground, making it therefore not appropriate to think of higher education in business or market terms. But I really must question whether anyone among the community college reform crowd has considered conducting a competitive market analysis to determine what its top competitors, the for-profit career colleges, are doing that enables them to retain and graduate demographically-similar students at much higher rates than the public community college sector, while charging higher out-of-pocket tuition.
I think they would find that the career colleges are specialized service providers that are focused on meeting the needs of their customers. They generally are focused on helping their students succeed by developing relationships with them in order to be in the position to identify potential issues that might lead to a student dropping out of school - before it happens. This allows college officials to step in when appropriate to help the students try to overcome the issues before a student drops out. Career colleges are also specialized service providers that aren't trying to offer a large number of educational programs and amenities in order to meet every single educational objective in a community (be all things to all people). Rather, they offer a limited number of career-specific training programs in fields for which there is likely a local demand for skilled workers.
Links for 04/19/10
Rick Hess on Rep. Harkin's proposal to inject "emergency spending" for education:
Harkin imagines, I presume, that our kids and grandkids will one day thank us profusely for putting them even deeper in debt so that districts can avoid trimming unaffordable benefits, taking a hard look at operations, closing underutilized facilities, or seeking more cost-effective ways to deploy staff.Ben Miller:
universities matter in student outcomes. Schools’ financial aid allocation and state’s subsidy decisions have a real and dramatic effect on how quickly their students are able to degreesAssociation for Career and Technical Education attempts to define career readiness:
three areas of strength that students need if they are to be ready for the various demands of a 21st-century workplace.David Bunting, executive director of the Iowa Association for Career and Technical Education, as quoted in an IHE article:
One is a strong core of academic skills that would launch them into good jobs or entry-level college work without remedial classes...to be “truly career-ready,” students also must know how to apply those academic skills in the context of the jobs they do
Special attention should be given to skills that employers often cite as deficient,
“employability” skills, such as adaptability, collaboration, and critical thinking, and “technical” skills that are specific to particular fields, such as those required for industry licensure or certification.
We always tell career teachers to integrate reading, writing and mathematics into their curriculum, but we never tell, say, English teachers to integrate work skills
The college-level biology teacher, for instance, should be inspiring students to careers in biology and telling them what’s out there for them. When we talk integration, we only think the career-tech [instructors] should do it; the academics should do it, too. Maybe what we need to do is put much more emphasis on what’s going to be used
Friday, April 16, 2010
Abolish Colleges of Education
By Richard Vedder
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new "normal schools" were created --colleges to train teachers. Established universities also added schools or colleges of education. There is mounting evidence that this was a mistake. It is time that public policy turn to doing something about it.
My wonderful CCAP Whiz Kids have written blogs exposing one huge scandal --that grades in virtually all schools of education are uniformly high. The best and brightest are treated the same, roughly, as those of mediocre intellectual or interpersonal qualities. Looking at a sample of literally scores of institutions, the Whiz Kids found that the typical student earned a grade of A or A- in education courses, while the median grade in, say, economics courses was a B-. Yet I would bet $1,000 against $1 that on average the intellectual rigor in the economics classes was far higher than in the education ones. We offer Feel Good instruction emphasizing raising self esteem in education schools, crowding students out of legitimate courses in subject matter.
To be sure, there has been a realization of this problem for decades, and in some cases some things have been done about it. The proportion of college students majoring in education has undergone a deserved decline. But most teachers in K-12 settings today were either majors in education or took lots of education courses. And to what result? The overall student performance levels in the U.S. K-12 schools are embarrassingly low, although that reflects a lot of other factors beside so-so teaching.
Teachers in the Teach for America program do a great job by all accounts, and few of them have had the mindless education courses that most states require. Teachers getting licensed via alternative certification options in states like New Jersey have performed as well or better in the classroom as those with more formal education training. College professors teaching 18 and 19 year old kids are winning teaching awards (I would immodestly include myself) never having a class in how to teach. Yet they are forbidden to teach 17 year old students in high school because they lack these vacuous courses. My own son was a Teacher of the Year nominee in his first year of middle school teaching --before he had taken any education courses. The examples abound.
Mediocre standards --or no standards--in education schools have returned to bite the colleges. We turn out teachers with mediocre basic knowledge skills but firm indoctrination in promoting student self esteem. A decade later, the products of these teachers return to study at the university --and often they are pretty mediocre, since the teachers have not challenged them to learn basic facts and principles on which our world depends.
The solution: after a certain date in the not-to-distant future, remove all federal subsidies for institutions with colleges or schools of education. Remove subsidies to state governments requiring teachers to take more than a small number of education type courses. Ultimately make it a felony for any school superintendent to knowingly hire a graduate of a college of education (allowing a grandfather clause to exempt teachers educated in the past). Put these schools out of business.
That is not to say, however, that teachers should have no training specific to the instructional mission they carry out. I think it is reasonable to require an elementary teacher to take up to five three-credit hour semester hours dealing with pedagogy, and up to one semester of time in student teaching, working with an experienced teacher. But I think it should be required that teachers mostly study in academic areas where they are teaching --French teachers should study French, for example.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new "normal schools" were created --colleges to train teachers. Established universities also added schools or colleges of education. There is mounting evidence that this was a mistake. It is time that public policy turn to doing something about it.
My wonderful CCAP Whiz Kids have written blogs exposing one huge scandal --that grades in virtually all schools of education are uniformly high. The best and brightest are treated the same, roughly, as those of mediocre intellectual or interpersonal qualities. Looking at a sample of literally scores of institutions, the Whiz Kids found that the typical student earned a grade of A or A- in education courses, while the median grade in, say, economics courses was a B-. Yet I would bet $1,000 against $1 that on average the intellectual rigor in the economics classes was far higher than in the education ones. We offer Feel Good instruction emphasizing raising self esteem in education schools, crowding students out of legitimate courses in subject matter.
To be sure, there has been a realization of this problem for decades, and in some cases some things have been done about it. The proportion of college students majoring in education has undergone a deserved decline. But most teachers in K-12 settings today were either majors in education or took lots of education courses. And to what result? The overall student performance levels in the U.S. K-12 schools are embarrassingly low, although that reflects a lot of other factors beside so-so teaching.
Teachers in the Teach for America program do a great job by all accounts, and few of them have had the mindless education courses that most states require. Teachers getting licensed via alternative certification options in states like New Jersey have performed as well or better in the classroom as those with more formal education training. College professors teaching 18 and 19 year old kids are winning teaching awards (I would immodestly include myself) never having a class in how to teach. Yet they are forbidden to teach 17 year old students in high school because they lack these vacuous courses. My own son was a Teacher of the Year nominee in his first year of middle school teaching --before he had taken any education courses. The examples abound.
Mediocre standards --or no standards--in education schools have returned to bite the colleges. We turn out teachers with mediocre basic knowledge skills but firm indoctrination in promoting student self esteem. A decade later, the products of these teachers return to study at the university --and often they are pretty mediocre, since the teachers have not challenged them to learn basic facts and principles on which our world depends.
The solution: after a certain date in the not-to-distant future, remove all federal subsidies for institutions with colleges or schools of education. Remove subsidies to state governments requiring teachers to take more than a small number of education type courses. Ultimately make it a felony for any school superintendent to knowingly hire a graduate of a college of education (allowing a grandfather clause to exempt teachers educated in the past). Put these schools out of business.
That is not to say, however, that teachers should have no training specific to the instructional mission they carry out. I think it is reasonable to require an elementary teacher to take up to five three-credit hour semester hours dealing with pedagogy, and up to one semester of time in student teaching, working with an experienced teacher. But I think it should be required that teachers mostly study in academic areas where they are teaching --French teachers should study French, for example.
Bishirjian's Lament
By Richard Vedder
Dick Bishirjian is an unusual university president. He is blunt, outspoken, not afraid of controversy, and no doubt offensive to some precisely because he does not speak the diplomatic, politically correct blather than emanates so predictably from the mouths of university leaders. I like him a lot. He runs a for-profit online school, Yorktown University, and is constantly fighting for the right to operate.
Lately, Dick's emails have centered on his trials and tribulations before the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the university accrediting arm of the largest of the regional accreditors, the North Central Association. As I understand it, the HLC is threatening to sanction accredited schools that cannot demonstrate that they have licenses to operate in every state in which they have students. Thus a small online school like Yorktown, with perhaps students in 10-15 states under HLC jurisdiction, may have to hire lawyers, etc., to file paperwork in all of those states in order to do business. Another great higher education entrepreneur, Randy Best, once told me that barriers to entry imposed by regulations (e.g., accreditation) was one of the single largest obstacles to offering truly low cost quality college education in America. I thought Randy was exaggerating a bit, but after reading Dick's laments I am coming to realize that he is right on target.
It is all ridiculous. It is bad enough that we have seven regional accreditors instead of one national one, and the operating rules in, say, California or Florida probably differ from those in Illinois. It is worse that the cost of acquiring accreditation is a serious barrier to entry for modestly capitalized firms, some of which have interesting and innovative curricular concepts. But now to think that state governments can add their costly and educationally meaningless barriers on top of all that is particularly infuriating.
What to do? I think people like Dick should ban together with a good public interest law firm like the Institute for Justice and challenge this type of regulation on constitutional grounds --a violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S.Constitution. As Dick points out, the FTC has told states they cannot regulate internet sales of eyeware products, presumably on those constitutional grounds. Courts have looked with disfavor on attempts of states to forbid interstate importation of liquor. It is time to challenge this type of regulation.
Meeting recently with the CEO of one of the nation's largest for-profit providers, I was told that accreditation on balance has little impact --its costs are offset by its benefits, providing sort of a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" to reliable and reputable deliverers of higher education services. The big guys, though, can endure spending a few million dollars to overcome the duplication inanities of the bureaucrats. This gives them an unfair advantage over the Dick Bishirjian's of the world, who are trying to obtain the scale of operation that makes internet-based higher education profitable. Let's level the playing field.
Dick Bishirjian is an unusual university president. He is blunt, outspoken, not afraid of controversy, and no doubt offensive to some precisely because he does not speak the diplomatic, politically correct blather than emanates so predictably from the mouths of university leaders. I like him a lot. He runs a for-profit online school, Yorktown University, and is constantly fighting for the right to operate.
Lately, Dick's emails have centered on his trials and tribulations before the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the university accrediting arm of the largest of the regional accreditors, the North Central Association. As I understand it, the HLC is threatening to sanction accredited schools that cannot demonstrate that they have licenses to operate in every state in which they have students. Thus a small online school like Yorktown, with perhaps students in 10-15 states under HLC jurisdiction, may have to hire lawyers, etc., to file paperwork in all of those states in order to do business. Another great higher education entrepreneur, Randy Best, once told me that barriers to entry imposed by regulations (e.g., accreditation) was one of the single largest obstacles to offering truly low cost quality college education in America. I thought Randy was exaggerating a bit, but after reading Dick's laments I am coming to realize that he is right on target.
It is all ridiculous. It is bad enough that we have seven regional accreditors instead of one national one, and the operating rules in, say, California or Florida probably differ from those in Illinois. It is worse that the cost of acquiring accreditation is a serious barrier to entry for modestly capitalized firms, some of which have interesting and innovative curricular concepts. But now to think that state governments can add their costly and educationally meaningless barriers on top of all that is particularly infuriating.
What to do? I think people like Dick should ban together with a good public interest law firm like the Institute for Justice and challenge this type of regulation on constitutional grounds --a violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S.Constitution. As Dick points out, the FTC has told states they cannot regulate internet sales of eyeware products, presumably on those constitutional grounds. Courts have looked with disfavor on attempts of states to forbid interstate importation of liquor. It is time to challenge this type of regulation.
Meeting recently with the CEO of one of the nation's largest for-profit providers, I was told that accreditation on balance has little impact --its costs are offset by its benefits, providing sort of a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" to reliable and reputable deliverers of higher education services. The big guys, though, can endure spending a few million dollars to overcome the duplication inanities of the bureaucrats. This gives them an unfair advantage over the Dick Bishirjian's of the world, who are trying to obtain the scale of operation that makes internet-based higher education profitable. Let's level the playing field.
Links for 04/16/10
Forrest Hinton
if our society wants to cultivate outstanding teachers from the achiever class, it has to begin to put the right incentives in place for these smart, ambitious people to join the profession. This involves increased compensation that is based on achievement, changed images and demographics of teachers, opportunities to advance while in the classroom, and, yes, some much-needed, healthy competition.Louise Tickle
Today, the public policy decisions our society has made force our schools to recruit too many teachers who, frankly, want stability, do not take risks, and aren’t interested in improving their profession. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t terrific teachers out there; it means that there aren’t nearly enough
a new breed of high-achieving students who have looked hard at what higher education has to offer and decided that the innovative new courses available at their local further education college are plenty good enough.Chad Aldeman:
if high-achieving non-graduates are now able to get the same type of job as those who have a degree, why is higher education still seen as the be-all and end-all?
The chances of any one student getting into any one school will become smaller and smaller, even as the number of spaces at those schools keeps pace with demographic changes. The spaces themselves are not becoming more scarce; it’s the admissions craze that’s making them look that way.
they would have to accept that the admissions process is no longer about crafting the perfect freshman class as if each student was a Lego piece in a giant, fragile sculpture that would collapse without the perfect amount of Florida students, or oboists, or whatever else.
Students would apply to this third-party unit and list their preferences in order, and then a calculation would be run that would place students and fill school slots
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Senate Proposal: Let's Drop More Money Out of Airplanes
by Daniel L. Bennett
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Senator Tom Harkin (D, IA), who heads the senate education committee, has introduced a bill this week that will inject
Richard Vedder has proposed the 3 I's for education reform: incentives, information and innovation. If the public is going to support the financing of education, then it needs to start demanding these things and stop pretending that education is somehow a special case that can indefinitely avoid accountability as it vacuums up increasing amounts of American wealth into its bottomless pit.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Senator Tom Harkin (D, IA), who heads the senate education committee, has introduced a bill this week that will inject
$23-billion into state budgets for school districts and colleges just as money from the federal stimulus law begins to run outin order to:
give states money to fill budget gaps and avoid layoffs once money from the stimulus measure's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which gave states $39.6-billion for education, is spent.The bill was introduced as an emergency spending bill, meaning that it would be exempt from the meaningless pay-as-you-go rules that require new spending to be financed. In other words, Harkin's plan is to drop more money out of airplanes for education. This is just the latest effort to redistribute more taxpayer money into the education system without getting anything in return that would begin to move us towards meaningful education reform.
Richard Vedder has proposed the 3 I's for education reform: incentives, information and innovation. If the public is going to support the financing of education, then it needs to start demanding these things and stop pretending that education is somehow a special case that can indefinitely avoid accountability as it vacuums up increasing amounts of American wealth into its bottomless pit.
Unionized TA's
by Peter Neiger
Inside of an institution of higher education there are many players driven by different incentives and goals, but the ultimate mission of educating students is supposed to come first. Unfortunately, the federal government and organized labor are actively working against providing a quality and affordable education for undergraduates. As Inside Higher Ed reported on Monday, the new make-up of the National Labor Relations Board will be actively work to get graduate teaching assistants to collectively bargain at private universities.
Chair Wilma B. Liebman of the NLRB has stated they will take a “more dynamic” approach to pursuing changes to policies implemented by the Bush-era NLRB. While unionization of graduate students may seem like a small step, it could prove to be harmful to both undergraduate students as well as the teaching assistants it is intended to help.
Financial times are tough and if graduate students make themselves less employable by demanding more out of their TA positions they are setting themselves up to be phased out. Universities are becoming increasingly creative at outsourcing grading and teaching, making TA’s more replaceable than ever. Even talk of collective bargaining by the NLRB could be the final straw for many institutions looking to cut costs.
Graduate students should be actively working to prove their value to the universities, not turning themselves into a liability. Universities exist to teach students, not provide graduate students with jobs. When TA’s are no longer working towards that same end, the TA’s will no longer have a job, and the tuition remission that often goes with it.
Inside of an institution of higher education there are many players driven by different incentives and goals, but the ultimate mission of educating students is supposed to come first. Unfortunately, the federal government and organized labor are actively working against providing a quality and affordable education for undergraduates. As Inside Higher Ed reported on Monday, the new make-up of the National Labor Relations Board will be actively work to get graduate teaching assistants to collectively bargain at private universities.
Chair Wilma B. Liebman of the NLRB has stated they will take a “more dynamic” approach to pursuing changes to policies implemented by the Bush-era NLRB. While unionization of graduate students may seem like a small step, it could prove to be harmful to both undergraduate students as well as the teaching assistants it is intended to help.
Financial times are tough and if graduate students make themselves less employable by demanding more out of their TA positions they are setting themselves up to be phased out. Universities are becoming increasingly creative at outsourcing grading and teaching, making TA’s more replaceable than ever. Even talk of collective bargaining by the NLRB could be the final straw for many institutions looking to cut costs.
Graduate students should be actively working to prove their value to the universities, not turning themselves into a liability. Universities exist to teach students, not provide graduate students with jobs. When TA’s are no longer working towards that same end, the TA’s will no longer have a job, and the tuition remission that often goes with it.
More Healthcare Hubbub
by Todd Holbrook
The University of Pennsylvania is taking student diversity to a new level starting next year, with transgender surgeries coming under coverage for all students on the university sponsored health insurance plan. Penn will join around 30 other colleges across the country in providing transgender surgeries, under a program sponsored by Aetna. What's covered? Up to $50,000 for the cost of surgery, psychotherapy and hormone treatment related to sex reassignment. While these schools may be gaining valuable sensitivity points, they're definitely not doing the average student any favors when it comes to quarterly insurance premiums that many students wind up paying in addition to tuition, a plethora of fees and living expenses.
One of my major gripes about student health insurance is that students are by default enrolled unless they unilaterally 'opt-out' of the insurance policies. I'm curious as to whether many colleges operate as my alma matter did in offering zero reminders to students that they need to opt-out of the insurance if they are covered by their parents' or own health insurance plan. I know of many instances in which students were milked of several hundred dollars in a single term for university-sponsored health insurance coverage when they were already covered on their parents' insurance plans because they failed to realize that they needed to opt-out before the deadline had passed. It is generally a good idea for colleges to participate in group insurance plans to save students (who are not covered elsewhere) money on insurance premiums, but it would be a better policy if the default were to not be covered, with a voluntary opt-in required to enroll.
The University of Pennsylvania is taking student diversity to a new level starting next year, with transgender surgeries coming under coverage for all students on the university sponsored health insurance plan. Penn will join around 30 other colleges across the country in providing transgender surgeries, under a program sponsored by Aetna. What's covered? Up to $50,000 for the cost of surgery, psychotherapy and hormone treatment related to sex reassignment. While these schools may be gaining valuable sensitivity points, they're definitely not doing the average student any favors when it comes to quarterly insurance premiums that many students wind up paying in addition to tuition, a plethora of fees and living expenses.
One of my major gripes about student health insurance is that students are by default enrolled unless they unilaterally 'opt-out' of the insurance policies. I'm curious as to whether many colleges operate as my alma matter did in offering zero reminders to students that they need to opt-out of the insurance if they are covered by their parents' or own health insurance plan. I know of many instances in which students were milked of several hundred dollars in a single term for university-sponsored health insurance coverage when they were already covered on their parents' insurance plans because they failed to realize that they needed to opt-out before the deadline had passed. It is generally a good idea for colleges to participate in group insurance plans to save students (who are not covered elsewhere) money on insurance premiums, but it would be a better policy if the default were to not be covered, with a voluntary opt-in required to enroll.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Gainful Employment Update
by Daniel L. Bennett
I've written in the past (here, here) about the potential negative implications of the Department of Education's proposal to define gainful employment - a regulation that requires for-profit colleges to place their students in career fields related to their program of study. On March 22, 18 Congressional members sent a letter to ED Secretary Arne Duncan, urging him to reconsider. Apparently the message that the proposal is a disaster waiting to happen is started to resonate at the ED. Yesterday, there were reports from Investor's Business Daily that:
I've written in the past (here, here) about the potential negative implications of the Department of Education's proposal to define gainful employment - a regulation that requires for-profit colleges to place their students in career fields related to their program of study. On March 22, 18 Congressional members sent a letter to ED Secretary Arne Duncan, urging him to reconsider. Apparently the message that the proposal is a disaster waiting to happen is started to resonate at the ED. Yesterday, there were reports from Investor's Business Daily that:
The Education Dept. has proposed exemptions to its so-called "gainful employment rule" that aims to limit student loans so they don't greatly exceed projected salaries. The exemption would apply to programs with a graduation rate of more than 50% and a placement rate over 70%.and the Wall Street Journal reported:
The draft, apparently sent from the DOE to the Office of Management and Budget for review, isn't a public document but analysts at Credit Suisse and Signal Hill reported it included an exemption for institutions with a 50% completion rate and, of those who finished, 70% job-placement rate. That would reintroduce an exemption that had appeared in earlier drafts before being cut, the analysts said, and lower the completion rate from the previous 70% threshold.However, according to a story from Inside Higher Ed:
the department's proposed regulations would leave intact language -- on which federal negotiators failed to reach agreement in February -- that would require that debt repayments of recent graduates of for-profit vocational programs be no more than 8 percent of the graduates' annual salaries.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Grade Inflation -- Another Look
by Christopher Matgouranis
Recently CCAP has begun to address the issue of grade inflation in American higher education, specifically examining its prevalence in Colleges/Departments of Education. We are currently working on a more expansive study. Combing through aggregate grade data on the website Campusbuddy.com, CCAP (specifically Chris Denhart and Michael Malesick) has been examining grade inflation across four separate disciplines as well as university-wide data. Continuing with past research, the field of education is a main focus and is examined along with economics, English, and physics. To date, data from more than 60 schools has been gathered. These schools are located across the country, ranging from nationally ranked state flagship universities (ex. University of Michigan) to regional state schools (ex. Central Michigan University).
Two separate indicators of grade inflation were analyzed. We looked for the average departmental/college grade point average, as well as the percent of “A” grades given in each field. The first chart depicts the average GPA, while the second shows “A” grade distributions.
Our findings are quite close to our initial estimates. Fields such as physics and economics are far behind the university averages in our sample, while English roughly keeps pace with the university, both in average GPA and “A” grade distribution. We are not making any claims that grade inflation does not exist in these disciplines—in fact, historical data show otherwise. Simply, these departments may be roughly keeping within the limits of the historical trends.
Education programs’ rampant grade inflation is an entirely different animal. Average GPAs are well over a half point higher than the university average and they also give nearly twice as many 'A' grades. This difference would be even more striking if education statistics were not included in university-wide averages, as education programs often comprise a considerable portion of the entire university.
As previous posts indicate, grade inflation within education programs can, and is, leading to serious systemic educational problems. Marginal students receive outstanding grades, often learning little. It may also be that the good students are gaining little from these programs as well. Perhaps there may be a better path towards becoming a primary or secondary school teacher. Students could forgo majoring in education and instead major in a more rigorous program (physics, economics, etc.). In order to become a teacher, they would be required to earn a teaching certificate on top of their bachelor’s degree. This route will provide a more thoroughly educated teacher, unlike many of the supposed “A” education majors currently being sent out into our K-12 schools.
CCAP will continue to examine grade inflation throughout the university system as a whole. Stay tuned.
Recently CCAP has begun to address the issue of grade inflation in American higher education, specifically examining its prevalence in Colleges/Departments of Education. We are currently working on a more expansive study. Combing through aggregate grade data on the website Campusbuddy.com, CCAP (specifically Chris Denhart and Michael Malesick) has been examining grade inflation across four separate disciplines as well as university-wide data. Continuing with past research, the field of education is a main focus and is examined along with economics, English, and physics. To date, data from more than 60 schools has been gathered. These schools are located across the country, ranging from nationally ranked state flagship universities (ex. University of Michigan) to regional state schools (ex. Central Michigan University).
Two separate indicators of grade inflation were analyzed. We looked for the average departmental/college grade point average, as well as the percent of “A” grades given in each field. The first chart depicts the average GPA, while the second shows “A” grade distributions.
Our findings are quite close to our initial estimates. Fields such as physics and economics are far behind the university averages in our sample, while English roughly keeps pace with the university, both in average GPA and “A” grade distribution. We are not making any claims that grade inflation does not exist in these disciplines—in fact, historical data show otherwise. Simply, these departments may be roughly keeping within the limits of the historical trends.
Education programs’ rampant grade inflation is an entirely different animal. Average GPAs are well over a half point higher than the university average and they also give nearly twice as many 'A' grades. This difference would be even more striking if education statistics were not included in university-wide averages, as education programs often comprise a considerable portion of the entire university.
As previous posts indicate, grade inflation within education programs can, and is, leading to serious systemic educational problems. Marginal students receive outstanding grades, often learning little. It may also be that the good students are gaining little from these programs as well. Perhaps there may be a better path towards becoming a primary or secondary school teacher. Students could forgo majoring in education and instead major in a more rigorous program (physics, economics, etc.). In order to become a teacher, they would be required to earn a teaching certificate on top of their bachelor’s degree. This route will provide a more thoroughly educated teacher, unlike many of the supposed “A” education majors currently being sent out into our K-12 schools.
CCAP will continue to examine grade inflation throughout the university system as a whole. Stay tuned.
Links for 04/13/10
Kevin Carey:
Overall, I think we’d be better off thinking about credits in more explicitly economic terms. They are a funny kind of currency, one whose value basis is not verifiable evidence of what you’ve learned but rather how long you’ve been taught (thus, credit hours adding up to two and four year degrees). You can only exchange them for a few classes of assets (degrees) that were established a long time ago and are rigidly applied to a huge array of disparate disciplines and academic programs. They’re also inflexible: there’s little difference in the job market between having 1 college credit and 119; both add up to “no bachelor’s degree.” The same is true for 120 and 200; you don’t get to keep the change if you earn more credits than you need. Tariffs, i.e. the inter-institutional credit tax imposed when colleges refuse to accept another college’s credits in transfer, are simultaneously large and non-transparent; oftentimes students aren’t told how many credits they can import until after they move from one school to another.Anya Kamenetz:
In the long run we’d be better off with more separation between the education and credentialing functions and more transparency all around
In 2008, the average four-year public university cost more than one-quarter of the median American household income, making college the great unaffordable necessity of middle-class lifeJoel I. Klein, Michael Lomax and Janet Murguía
In the absence of any sort of useful metric about what college students are learning and which factors are most important in ensuring that students go on to lead productive lives, competitive-minded parents get distracted by a perks war
the increasingly resortlike facilities are costly consumer enticements that have nothing to do with why the kids are there in the first place
The larger question could be whether it’s possible to reunite frugality with prestige in a new breed of higher education—one that relies on achievement, not new geranium beds.
Teacher quality is the single most important school factor in student success
we must attract teachers who performed well in college. Countries that do best on international tests draw teachers from the top third of college graduates. In the United States, however, most teachers come from the bottom third. Moreover, the bottom of that group is vastly overrepresented in our highest-needs communities.
we must create systems that reward excellence rather than seniority by creating sophisticated evaluation systems that include student performance and merit-based tenure and compensation. We must make it easier to remove teachers who are shown to be ineffective.
call for a reevaluation of seniority -- the staple of most collective bargaining agreements -- in the context of what actually serves children. But right now, one bad teacher with seniority earns as much as two great young teachers. Who really thinks this is best for our kids?
We will never eradicate poverty until we fix education. The question is whether we have the political courage to take on those who defend a status quo that serves many adults but fails many children.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Links for 04/08/10
Thomas Frey:
Overhead costs are far too high, state support is dropping, and college tuition is far too expensive. Colleges are pricing themselves out of existence.Congressman Howard "Buck" McKeon:
Online education can take place at a fraction of the cost. Many of the courses can be packaged and commoditized, and as courseware aggregators begin to sell courses online, there will invariably be course wars where each will try to undercut the price of their competition.
Majors tend to be a label that is both defining and restrictive at the same time. Majors represent a top-down approach to sorting out what skills are important for a given career path. But over time the major tends to lose its relevance. Employers use majors to help prioritize candidates, but they all know that the major alone is a poor indicator of the skills and talents an individual will bring to the table. Is there a better system? None that I'm aware of yet, but it is clearly an old system long overdue for an infusion of disruptive new approaches.
classroom-centric education is not necessary for learning
Colleges are like slow moving whales about to get attacked by saltwater piranhas. While department heads in colleges are off studying the mating rituals of Komodo Dragons in Indonesia, corporate managers are working day and night, ruthlessly focused on opening new markets and uncovering new revenue streams. The pace and intensity of the work is radically different.
Colleges have huge operating budgets and the corporate world is seeing this as fertile territory to make money. The vultures are already circling.
It is just plain common sense that putting 100 percent of borrowing risk and responsibility on the U.S. Treasury — in other words, on taxpayers — would be a costly proposition...Yet because of congressional accounting rules, Democrats were able to claim ‘savings’ by driving out the private sector and transforming the U.S. Department of Education into one of the nation’s largest banks. This new analysis has a simple message: Taxpayers bewareNancy Cook
But there's no denying that the fight between the cerebral B.A. vs. the practical B.S. is heating up. For now, practicality is the frontrunner, especially as the recession continues to hack into the budgets of both students and the schools they attend
[Anthony Carnevale]: Students want something they can sell
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Examining Institutional Priorities
by Daniel L. Bennett
Some economists believe that we can accurately judge one's priorities by evaluating how they spend their money. Another way of looking at it is assuming that people and organizations put their money where their mouth is. The Department of Education (ED) released a report this week that gives us a glimpse of how colleges spent their money in fiscal year 2008, presumably showing their priorites. ED notes that the various sectors use different accounting rules (most publics use GASB, while everyone else uses FASB) and thus, the results across categories aren't exactly an apples and oranges comparison. Despite this caveat, we can gain some sense of institutional priorities by examining the spending categories of the various sectors. In the table below, I calculated expenditures of 4 main categories (in some cases, the figures were disaggregated in ED's report) by sector, and included the percentage of total expenditures for each category.
The expenditure data tells us about how institutions prioritize their spending. A few generalizations include:
Some economists believe that we can accurately judge one's priorities by evaluating how they spend their money. Another way of looking at it is assuming that people and organizations put their money where their mouth is. The Department of Education (ED) released a report this week that gives us a glimpse of how colleges spent their money in fiscal year 2008, presumably showing their priorites. ED notes that the various sectors use different accounting rules (most publics use GASB, while everyone else uses FASB) and thus, the results across categories aren't exactly an apples and oranges comparison. Despite this caveat, we can gain some sense of institutional priorities by examining the spending categories of the various sectors. In the table below, I calculated expenditures of 4 main categories (in some cases, the figures were disaggregated in ED's report) by sector, and included the percentage of total expenditures for each category.
Table: Fall 2008 Institutional Expenditures by Category and % of Total Expenditures, by Sector
The expenditure data tells us about how institutions prioritize their spending. A few generalizations include:
- 2-year and less schools spend a greater portion of their resources on instruction, regardless of sector, suggesting that 2-year and less schools place a higher priority on teaching than do 4-year schools
- Among 4-year institutions, private not-for-profits spend the highest percentage of their funding on instruction, although it should be noted that the 4-year for-profit sector uses online courses to a greater extent than the other sectors and this likely produces lower instructional costs
- Public institutions spend the biggest share of their budgets on research and public service, while the for-profit sector spends virtually nil, indicating that research and public service are a high priority at public and not-for-profit institutions, but less so at for-profit schools (note: he figures for the for-profit sector were aggregated for these 2 categories, while they were disaggregated for the other 2 sectors)
- The for-profit sector spends significantly more than the other sectors on student services, academic and institutional support, suggesting that it places a higher priority on providing services to students than do other school types (note: the figures for the for-profit sector were aggregated for these 3 categories, while they were disaggregated for the other 2 sectors)
Links for 4/7/10
This will likely be the last links blog for a couple weeks. Just don't write anything important while I'm gone :)
Peter Conn
Peter Conn
I would much prefer to define our current job-market difficulties as a problem in underdemand rather than oversupply. The facts, however, cannot be denied. After a generation of dithering, we need to act decisively to minimize the damage that our practices are inflicting on thousands of talented young women and men whose aspirations and idealism are jeopardized by our institutional inertia as well as by our laissez-faire, wishful thinking that the job market will simply take care of itself.Stuart Macdonald
[referees] are seen as part of the editorial team, gatekeepers blackballing what does not fit, screening for what is wrong with a paper rather than what is right.Arnold Kling
When upsetting a single referee means certain rejection, authors play safe and deliver what is most likely to please. At revision stage, many change what they know to be right to satisfy a referee.
As surely as a top journal identifies academic expertise, high impact factor – a calculation of how often a journal’s papers are cited – identifies a top journal. This, too, is manipulated. Editors aim to publish only the most citable papers…
Our latest research reveals citability leading to clubability… For instance, the Journal of Marketing Research, with 60% internal citation by its few, shows almost no interest in anything that is not published in the Journal of Marketing Research…
Academics no longer look to this distorted system to identify experts. But politicians still do…
I tend to think of majors in science, math, and engineering as having obtained skills, majors in education have obtained credentials, and majors in business, social science, and humanities as having obtained neither. That is a gross over-generalization, of course.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Free Trade in Higher Ed?...Not Likely in the Age of Massive Subsidization
by Daniel L. Bennett
Ben Wildavsky has an interesting essay in the Chronicle this morning in which he calls for free global trade in higher education.
The public subsidization of of higher ed creates many perverse incentives that work counter to free trade.
First, public subsidies are intended to serve domestic interest. Many taxpayers support the subsidization of higher ed because they want it to be affordable and accessible for domestic students. If colleges supported by taxpayer money were to tell the public that they plan to reject many more domestic students in order to open more seats to foreign students based on merit, and that the taxpayer funds would used to pay for these students, then I suspect that the public would soon begin to demand that the taxpayer funds be re-allocated in order to serve domestic interests (FYI, a similar scenario has been taking place at the prestigious public state universities for some time).
Second, subsidies create barriers to competition. Domestic industry players (i.e. - colleges and their associations) would be, and have been, opposed to new market entrants. This would mean more competition for students, faculty and especially public resources. Higher education has substantial lobbying efforts to impose barriers to entry and protect its interests, mainly just to deter domestic competition. Introduce foreign competition, and the stakes become much higher.
Third, public subsidies distort market prices. It is impossible to have a global free market in higher education when the industry is so heavily subsidized and consumers rarely incur the full costs, especially when the subsidies from different governments are in various amounts. This prevents normal supply and demand conditions from establishing a market-clearing price, even in a domestic market.
While I laud Wildavsky for his desire to create a global free market in higher education, it is not quite a realistic goal in the era of massive public subsidization of the industry. However, there is some optimism that globalization may help turn the page on affordability:
Ben Wildavsky has an interesting essay in the Chronicle this morning in which he calls for free global trade in higher education.
The globalization of higher education should be embraced, not feared. The worldwide competition for human talent, the race to conduct innovative research, the push to extend university campuses to multiple countries, and the rush to produce knowledgeable and creative graduates who can strengthen increasingly knowledge-based economies—all of those trends are hugely beneficial to the world.I'm all for free and open global competition in higher education and ideas, and generally think that protectionist measures that restrict the number of students, scholars or colleges that can be traded (imported/exported) do more harm than good. There may be one factor that contributes more to the protectionism than anything else: the fact that many governments subsidize higher education extensively.
Just as free trade in manufacturing provides the lowest-cost goods, benefiting both consumers and the most efficient producers, global academic competition allows for the free movement of people and ideas, on the basis of merit, with enormously positive consequences for people, for universities, and for nations.
The public subsidization of of higher ed creates many perverse incentives that work counter to free trade.
First, public subsidies are intended to serve domestic interest. Many taxpayers support the subsidization of higher ed because they want it to be affordable and accessible for domestic students. If colleges supported by taxpayer money were to tell the public that they plan to reject many more domestic students in order to open more seats to foreign students based on merit, and that the taxpayer funds would used to pay for these students, then I suspect that the public would soon begin to demand that the taxpayer funds be re-allocated in order to serve domestic interests (FYI, a similar scenario has been taking place at the prestigious public state universities for some time).
Second, subsidies create barriers to competition. Domestic industry players (i.e. - colleges and their associations) would be, and have been, opposed to new market entrants. This would mean more competition for students, faculty and especially public resources. Higher education has substantial lobbying efforts to impose barriers to entry and protect its interests, mainly just to deter domestic competition. Introduce foreign competition, and the stakes become much higher.
Third, public subsidies distort market prices. It is impossible to have a global free market in higher education when the industry is so heavily subsidized and consumers rarely incur the full costs, especially when the subsidies from different governments are in various amounts. This prevents normal supply and demand conditions from establishing a market-clearing price, even in a domestic market.
While I laud Wildavsky for his desire to create a global free market in higher education, it is not quite a realistic goal in the era of massive public subsidization of the industry. However, there is some optimism that globalization may help turn the page on affordability:
a new corporation is promising that American college students can get a year's tuition, room, board, airfare, and support services for that price ($12,750)...Just one catch: It's all in China.(Note: this list of perverse incentives created by public subsidies is certainly not exhaustive)
Links for 4/6/10
Kevin Carey
You can have a short run, or you can have a long run, but eventually things are going to get ugly in a business where not only is there no relationship between what services cost and what customers are charged, and not only are the people providing the service ignorant of the cost, but there are active cultural norms discouraging those people from asking questions about cost or even considering concepts like efficiency in the way they work. Eventually someone will fight their way past whatever regulatory barriers you’ve paid for and pull the rug out from under you. There’s no avoiding it forever. The problem in higher education is that a lot of the decision-makers can make a plausible bet that they won’t be standing on the rug when it happens…CATHERINE RAMPELL
Apparently in response to the poor job market for law school grads, one school is trying to give its students a boost: retroactive grade inflation.Steve Kolowich
Loyola Law School of Los Angeles is increasing all grades by a third…
Statistics.com, a company that teaches a swath of online statistics courses to mostly adult learners…Ben Wildavsky via Scott Jaschik
The company outsources grading and other work to master’s degree-holders in India for much less than it would cost to employ similarly qualified teaching assistants in the United States…
"The institutions that dominate in a particular subject area will do so, in part, because they have expertise and experience in that subject area that will give them a leg up on institutions whose orientation is more general," Bruce says. "This view is antithetical to the view that large online institutions can dominate in all arenas by driving down costs."…
to frame what’s happening in global higher ed purely in terms of a competitive threat is to miss the huge opportunities that exist in a world in which people and ideas are circulating more freely than ever before, a trend that I call “free trade in minds.” I think joining the competitive fray is great.
But the alarmist rhetoric we often hear has a destructive effect, because it suggests that we are going to lose out as other countries gain ground. It fosters what I call “academic protectionism,” which creates a climate of anxiety about what’s happening in other higher education systems. I’m not Panglossian about every aspect of global higher education -- there will undoubtedly be lots of missteps along the way, which is inevitable when the landscape changes so quickly. We’re in a period of experimentation. But it’s true that I’m optimistic, because I think we’re at an exciting time in the development of universities…
Monday, April 05, 2010
Leveling the Playing Field
by Daniel L. Bennett
New research from the Parthenon Group reveals that the societal cost of producing a positive outcome (defined as a completion or transfer) is quite comparable for community and for-profit colleges.
The research also portrays the costs in terms of positive outcomes. In measuring the societal cost, I would think that we should account for both positive and negative outcomes. Despite a few shortcomings, the results are very interesting and suggest that further research needs to be done. Stay tuned.
New research from the Parthenon Group reveals that the societal cost of producing a positive outcome (defined as a completion or transfer) is quite comparable for community and for-profit colleges.
When schools’ total revenues are considered (agnostic as to source of funding) and compared against the positive outcomes that are generated, private sector and public sector 2-year (or shorter)institutions look a lot alike: they take in roughly $25,000 of revenues to produce a positive outcome of graduation or transfer. This neck-in-neck cost to society clearly needs to be evaluated against the value of those degrees.I'm not all that surprised about the results of this analysis, as I previously suspected that the true cost per student of public colleges (once we account for subsidies) is likely not all that different than what for-profit schools charge. While this research is quite compelling, it falls a little short of revealing the full societal cost, as it fails to account for implicit costs, such as lost property tax revenues due to the non-profit status of public institutions, and the opportunity costs of government subsidies.
The research also portrays the costs in terms of positive outcomes. In measuring the societal cost, I would think that we should account for both positive and negative outcomes. Despite a few shortcomings, the results are very interesting and suggest that further research needs to be done. Stay tuned.
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